On the perfection of moral virtues.

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 169056

Dana wrote:
> To be honest LV summoning his DEs in GoF to witness his return and 
him mentioning all their names doesn't give the impression that no one
knew, who was who in the first war. I do not know were the idea came
from that LV kept his DEs in the dark about their fellow DEs. I might
have missed it in the books but with Sirius specifically mentioning
that he heard things about Wormtail in Azkaban makes me think Snape
knew this too but he never told DD this information because it could
have only come from him and he would have risked his cover if he had
done so. 
> 
Montavilla47 responded:
> If everyone knew everyone in the DE's, then it wouldn't have been
any special risk for Snape to tell DD, as any DE would have known. In
GoF, Karkaroffs says that LV didn't want his DEs to know who the
others were--since they were less likely to be betrayed.
> 
> That's a standard way of setting up a secret organization--so that 
your members are limited in their knowledge of other members. 
> 
> I agree that this is contradicted by the reunion in the Graveyard. 
It's hard to reconcile the conflicting bits of information.  <snip>

Carol responds:

First, I'd like to thank Montavilla47 for her answers in this post,
most of which I've snipped because I agree with them in most respects.
I'd especially like to thank her for pointing out that 1) JKR herself
has stated that there's more to snape than meets the eye, and 2) that
Snape fans in general do not agree on every aspect of their argument,
any more than anti-Snapers agree with every point that Dana makes. All
of us are individuals. Specific people may refer to Snape's teaching
methods as "noble"; others of us acknowledge that, while generally
effective given the results we see, his specific methods don't work
for Neville or Harry. As Montavilla47 says, JKR *has* made Snape
ambiguous, and until DH comes out, each reader is free to see one side
as stronger than the other. Many of us, for example, think that being
a "mean" (sarcastic and sometimes unfair) teacher does not mean that
he is evil or Voldemort's man. Many of the other teachers, including
Mcgonagall, are unfair or unduly harsh at one time or another (telling
Neville not to show the Durmstrang students that he's incapable of
performing a simple Switching Spell), but that doesn't make them ESE.

Anyway, I disagree with Dana on so many points and for so many reasons
that I'm only going to focus on this one, for which we can show the
canon. As Montavilla47 notes, it's Karkaroff (who should know and who
is naming as many names as he can to get himself off the hook) who
states that Voldemort made sure that the DEs didn't all know each
other (though obviously some knew each other):

"--we never knew the names of every one of our fellows--He [Voldemort]
alone knew exactly who we all were--" (GoF Am. ed. 588).

Considering that only one of Karkaroff's names is useful to Crouch, I
have a feeling he'd have revealed more if he knew them.

Snape, in showing Fudge his Dark Mark (which I've yet to figure out
why he'd do if he weren't supporting Dumbledore's contention that
Voldemort is back) says, "Every Death Eater had the sign burned into
him by the Dark Lord. It was a means of distinguishing one another,
and his means of summoning us to him" (710). Why would they need to
"distinguish... one another" if they all knew each other? 

As for the graveyard scene, it does not contradict Karkaroff's words.
The only people Voldemort names are those whose names have already
been published in the Daily Prophet as having pleaded the Imperius
Curse (Malfoy, Macnair, Avery, Nott, Crabbe, and Goyle):

As Fudge says to Harry, "You are merely repeating the names of those
who were acquitted of being Death Eaters thirteen years ago. You could
have found those names in old reports of the trials!" (706). But Harry
is actually naming only those DEs whom Voldemort addresses by name. 

Voldemort doesn't identify the three missing DEs (Snape, Karkaroff, or
the supposedly dead Barty Jr.), or, of course, the three (Evan Rosier,
Wilkes, and ??) who "died in [his] service." More important, he does
not name everyone who is present: "Some of the Death Eaters he passed
in silence, but he paused before others and spoke to them" (651). 

As we learn in "Spinner's End," several other DEs besides the six that
Voldmemrot names pled the Imperius Curse to escape imprisonment:
Fenrir Greyback, Amycus and Alecto Carrow, and Yaxley (whom I believe
to be the brutal-faced DE, FWIW). Surely, however, those four loyal
DEs are in attendance at the graveyard since Voldemort notes only
three living DEs that are missing and they would have been killed as
traitors had they not shown up. Certainly, they wouldn't have been
trusted with helping Draco to kill Dumbledore in HBP if they weren't
in the graveyard in GoF, nor would Snape in his guise as DE have
mentioned them to the Black sisters in the same breath as Lucius
Malfoy if they were disloyal.

But that can't be all of the people who aren't named (setting aside
the DEs currently in prison, who would presumably account for the
other gaps in the circle). Apparently, quite a few DEs are present:
The narrator notes that "Between graves, behind the yew tree, in every
shadowy space, wizards were Apparating" (646), all of them hooded and
masked, and Harry is "outnumbered by at least thirty to one" as they
circle him in preparation for the duel between LV and Harry (660).

So thirty or more Death Eaters are present. Of those, six are named
(not counting Wormtail, who is only addressed by his nickname). We can
identify several others who are almost certainly present as they're
not in prison at that time (Greyback, Yaxley, the Carrows, Gibbon, the
big blond DE if he's someone other than Crabbe). But that gives us
twelve (thirteen counting Wormtail), with at least seventeen or
eighteen more present but unidentifiable by the reader or Harry as of HBP.

Why would Voldemort skip over those people without naming them or
speaking to them? Surely it can't be because they're even more
negligible than Crabbe and Goyle, whom he acknowledges. Could it be
because their names were never released to the public, and, as
Karkaroff said, only Voldemort knows who they are? Are they spies
whose identity must be protected for their services to have any value?
Voldemort alone knows the answer. Voldemort trusts no one, not even
his own Death Eaters, and he may well be keeping their names secret
not only from Harry (whom LV thinks is going to die anyway), but from
their fellow DEs, which, as Mad-eye Moody whispers to DD in the
Pensieve trial scene, is "a wise move as it prevent[s] someone like
[Karkaroff] from turning all of them in" (588).

Carol, who has more to say on the subject but doesn't want the length
of the post to get out of hand